Balloons, hearts and a cute turtle

Hello friends! I have a sweet encouragement card to share with you today. I wanted to make something cute, quick and easy to send to a friend. Many of us need encouragement and hope at this moment and a card can make someone's day at least a little bit better. 

Balloons, clouds, a cute turtle and glitter hearts are very cheerful, and that is what I was aiming for here. I wanted to do a tall card where there was plenty of space for the little turtle to fly away in her balloon. It's 4.5 x 8.2 in. Don't mind the dirt on the card to the left. I only noticed it after taking the photo and it was there since the card had fallen over. I could brush it off luckily. My projects sometimes takes tumbles while being photographed, especially if it is windy.

I used two stamp sets by Simon Says Stamp: Lifting Hearts and You Got This. On a piece of watercolor paper, stamp the turtle towards the top. The sentiment was stamped using two sentiment stamps. I placed a piece of torn printer paper over the word 'friend' when inking the first stamp. You can keep 'friend', but I only wanted a three line sentiment. Then stamp the second sentiment.

Watercolor the turtle and the balloons.

Paint the background blue and mist a little water here and there for texture.

Add Glossy Accents to the balloons to make them shine.

I die cut Tim Holtz Falling Hearts from Simon Says Stamp Aqua glitter paper, creating a whole lot of small glitter hearts in one go. I have die cut this great die from various glitter and metallic paper, so I have little hearts ready to use on projects. The clouds were die cut with Poppy Stamps Whittle Clouds, from white felt.

For some reason, the Glossy Accents crackled a little. I don't know if it reacted with the watercolor or if the layer was a little too thick. I like crackles, so I didn't mind.

The white highlights in the balloons will color a little when you coat them with Gloss Accents.

The turtle holds a little heart.

It is important to remember that this difficult situation shall pass. We will get through this.

After distressing the edges of the watercolor panel, I adhered it to turquoise cardstock and then to a folded white card.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today! Stay safe!

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.

Steampunk Bird Tutorial

Hello friends, I hope you are healthy and managing to keep the hope up. Being creative helps for me and if you find yourself struggling to sit down and create, try to do something simple. Make some backgrounds, stamp images and color in, or follow a tutorial. At the moment, I am busy finishing a project that I started with no plan at all, just adding things as I go along. 

In this post I will share a tutorial for a steampunk bird, with fun techniques working with foil tape, embossing folders, acrylic paint and embossing powders. Use them all, or focus on just one of the techniques.

At the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog we have a Steampunk theme this week. Don't miss the inspiration by our March guest designer Ann Chuang. 

I have had fun creating with Tim Holtz Patchwork Bird die. It is a perfect die for trying out different techniques on since it consists of many pieces. I am enjoying thinking out ways to use it and combining textures. This is my third patchwork bird. The first one was mainly made from fabric and was called Winter Bird and the second one was mainly done by using background stamps: Mixed Media Patchwork Bird. You can use the techniques with other dies and embossing folders too, or turn the project into a card instead.

Start by covering a tag with foil tape, or cover a piece of cardstock and then die cut a tag.

Emboss it in Tim's Foundry 3-D texture fade.

Paint with Distress Paints and then mist pretty heavily with water. Leave to dry. You've got to be patient because this step takes time.

When the paint is almost completely dry, wipe it off in some areas. You can wipe more paint off if you want to, but I was aiming for a look where not much of the original metal was showing. Add a piece of Design Tape and a ruler from Tim's Junk Drawer.

Die cut the base of the bird from mat board, the body, feet and two wings from Cracked Leather cardstock and the head and the stomach from heavystock cardstock and the rest of the pieces from paper covered with foil tape. I die cut a second wing and some extra tail-feathers, not shown here.

Emboss the metallic pieces in various embossing folders. I used Crackle 3-D, Dot-Matrix and Gridlock.

Paint with Distress Paint. Mist with water. When almost dry, wipe off some of the paint.

Ink the cracked leather cardstock pieces with Distress Ink.

I forgot to take photos of the two heat embossed pieces. The head was embossed with Ranger's Sea Mixed Media powder. The stomach was embossed with several layers of the new Fired Brick Distress Embossing Glace. In the final layer, I dropped in some Sea powder to create speckles. Be careful when heat embossing and never touch the melted powder until it is completely dry.

Glue the pieces to the mat board base bird. Die cut a piece of black paper for the eye and add a dot of Glossy Accents to the eye.

Leo had a look at my earlier stamped Mixed Media Patchwork bird and this steampunk one, and liked the former better. 'Since it is a real bird, this one is a robot bird, it is not real'. Pretty funny, and a robot bird is of course also a great steampunk bird.

Hats are common steampunk elements and I simply cut one from black metallic cardstock and sanded it slightly.

I also painted three gears and glued to the bird. Here you can also see how shiny the Distress Embossing Glace is.

And a painted game spinner was added to the wings.

The tail feathers are my favorite part of the Patchwork Bird and it is fun to mix textures and colors.

A couple of pieces from Tim's cool Junk Drawer Baseboards set were added to the tag, such as this game piece. Ink the edges and add a bit of black paint to them to distress them.

Here's another Junk Drawer piece.

By misting the paint with water, it blends and gets a mottled appearance on the embossed foil tape background.

Add some twine and then adhere the bird with foam dots for dimension.

I wanted to finish the post with this quote from Emily Dickinson. The importance of focusing on hope in hard times. You can find the full poem here.

I hope you will join us this week in our Steampunk challenge. As always, you have a chance to win a $50 gift voucher to do some fun shopping at Simon Says Stamp. You have until next Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

Don't forget to follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. 

Do you use Instagram? If so please add #sssmchallenge so we can see your entries there too.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today! Stay safe!

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.

DIY Photo Display Stand

Hello friends. I hope you are well and healthy. I am looking forward to spring and better times. Today, I am sharing a quick and easy photo display project. Make one for yourself or give it as a gift. This would also be a great project for kids to do. Instead of a photo, they could use a drawing or maybe color in some stamped images.

During March, the Eileen Hull Inspiration Team is sharing spring-themed projects. I used a photo of a field of white anemone flowers in a forest. It is one of my favorite places during the short time in spring when they flower. The whole forest floor is covered with white flowers. I used Eileen's Display Stand die to create this.

 

There was a time when I used a lot of ribbons while papercrafting, but lately I am no longer reaching for ribbons as often any more. For this project, I wanted soft textures and found a bunch of green and white ribbons and fibers.

Start by die cutting the Display Stand from mat board. As you can see, the scoreboards dies both cuts and scores the material, making assembly easy. This is an XL die so you need the Extended Cutting Pads, but it fits perfectly in an ordinary Big Shot or Vagabond.

Fold along the various scorelines and attach at the back as shown here.

Here's another view of the back.

Fold the front flap down.

Press it lightly and it will snap into the base. You don't need any adhesive to assemble the Display Stand, and it can be used in both directions, with the bigger or shorter side down. I used the shorter side down.

Apply matte medium on the short front piece and then start gluing down ribbons.

Continue with more ribbons and fibers. Don't be afraid to cover up parts of the first layer. 

Although the shape of the petals isn't quite right, I turned some of Tim Holtz Bouquet flowers into white anemones. Color the center yellow with a Distress Marker and use a green Distress Marker for the stem. Add some dots to the center with the green marker too.

The sentiment comes from the Paper Artsy Happiness Edition set by Alison Bomber. It was cut into strips. I find myself wanting to surround myself with positive sentiments at the moment.

Pick ribbons that fit with your photo and use different patterns and textures for an interesting effect.

Glue the flowers to the ribbons. I didn't add green to the centers of all of them, as you can see here.

And here's the larger collection of flowers. Now I can't wait for these to come out in real life too.

You might get a better impression of how the display stand looks here. It is very sturdy and such a clever construction.

From the back.

Take care everyone and try to stay positive.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today!  

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.

Additional supplies:

Eileen Hull Sizzix Display Stand XL die.